Thrashing the 9800GT 5x Gold, 1x silver

[K404]

Mobos:

MSI GD-80 (3DM06, 3DV)
Asus X48 Evo (3D01, 3D03)
MSI X58M (3D05, AM3)

CPUs: E86, I7 860, I7 950

Cooling: water + dice. More details per-run below. CPU pot by Otti, GPU pot by MMouse (Rev5.) Watercooling by XSPC + DangerDen

RAM:
X48: Crucial Ballistix Tracer
I7: G.Skill Ripjaws.

9800GT: Gainward/ Palit. One word: Ridiculous! Just...ridiculous. Even with the MHz I -pulled under dice, I was limited only by my reluctance to VID mod the card!


Others:

I'd like to thank G.Skill, Crucial and Xigmatek. Without your help, this would have needed more thought.




3D01: Beaten only by a tweaked driver install to allow 169.21 drivers. CPU wasnt on its best behaviour on the day. CPU + GPU under dice





3D03: hello D3D! I fell off my chair when this score popped up! CPU + GPU under dice






3D05: Wasnt even trying. GPU still under water. Was first run to see how 3DM05 liked a 1366.....!






3D06: squeezed out the original No.1 on watercooling with the P55 one night with the CPU + GPU under water. Not enough GPU power to need more CPU grunt, but re-ran with a frozen GPU and got this.







3DVantage. Not much of a lead here. Just a watercooled run. If mTech wants to play BS backup games, he better put some effort in......






AM3. Squeeze! CPU under dice... GPU under water!








Heres the kicker.... Those X58 runs were done during my first session with the board + CPU. They were powered up the 1st time the night before to install O.S. only! I'd call that a successful first touch

[BenchZowner]

Nice work Kenny

[GeorgeStorm]

Nicely done!
Any pics from the session?
I would try to improve the AQ3 is possible as its only just ahead of 2nd.

[George_o/c]

Great stuff Kenny

Work out your CPU clocks and re-bench the card for moar

[Oliver]

Hey Kenny, wicked stuff huh?

Congrats on the killer session you got pulled off

keep pushing it

[Turrican]

nice work kenny.

[filmbot]

I love your threads Kenny. It's like every few months you make one and it's just complete domination of some midrange card.

Great work man

[Leeghoofd]

I hate you Kenny Clapham, nothing more to add :p Really nice to see someone pulling out some old hawgs to bench with... doesn't always have to be the latest and most expensive hardware





Top job mate, let's see if our mutual friend has some more left :p, now go for them SLI cups !!! did I already say I hated you for taking my cups :p Would be interesting to see how you vmodded the gainward card. We had the GLH edition here and it didn't scale at all with volts nor better cooling ( talking about a 30-40mhz gain on GPU Vmodded and under H2O, think we might have overlooked something ) Expecting to see more 9800GT madness from ya. At least fous on 01, that can be done mate with a little bit more CPU powaaaa

[K404]

Thanks a lot guys

I think theres more to find in this 950.. maybe some higher RAM clocks once I master the Uncore limits... hope I can squeeze a bit more when its cold. I didnt really push this time.

Leeg... SLI is yours bro, I generally dont bench SLI, much as I enjoy playing with it every now and then....

Maybe squeeze 01 out without bodging 169.21 drivers. A wee bit from run order, a wee bit from CPU MHz..... maybe a couple hundred more from Nature.... who knows!

Vantage I want another pass at

[BenchZowner]

I wouldn't use the 169.21 drivers but another earlier version...

[Leeghoofd]

Share the secrets of that Gainward card Kenny plz , so I can spank Massman :p If it's the same edition ( saw your high ram clocks ) we must have surely overlooked some modification...

[K404]

Sure.

Core: Trimmer from FB pin to GND

GDDR: Same

Err...thats not meant to be a smart-arse answer. Just simple voltmods. vCore is kept JUST under cutoff point... so 1.42v load. The voltage is stable. No droop, + or -

RAM is set at 2.22v. Gave me extra core stability and sure... a wee bit more on the RAM.


Iv had a ****ing impossible job trying to find the sweetspot for a GTX+ thats on the same PCB. First touch on water: core ran too hot. Core fell over ~800MHz!! RAM clocked fairly well. 2nd touch: core running slightly cooler but OCs much further (850MHz,) but RAM falls over past 1225MHz???????? Iv disconnected the vGDDR mod and im gonna have a play tonight with it in that state. Maybe my GTX+ is suffering what your GT does? Or.... iv part-borked the card. Thats been known to happen

Also (obviously) too much juice hurts the clocking, regardless of temp. These cards might be especially fond of the sweetspot